Plenty of Army Rangers and other military personnel continue to
put their lives at stake in Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere else
where there’s a threat to the U.S. And there are 43 other
members of the Duke men's lacrosse team, he said, that deserve
their time in the spotlight.

It’s hard to realize the weight your story carries when
you are living it, but as Blue Devils defenseman Henry Lobb said,
“I’ve never heard of a story like it in college
athletics.”

At 29 years old, Carroll is a sixth-year, redshirt senior
defenseman at Duke. With four Middle East deployments behind him, a
wife and two kids at home, two season-ending knee injuries and a
two-year graduate business degree nearly complete, he’s not
exactly a college kid.

“I’m incredibly grateful that I’m able to do
all these things because of the guys that are still serving
overseas,” Carroll said. “A lot of attention will be
thrown at me, and people will thank me for my service, but
it’s hard for me to hear that and not automatically think
about all the people who are still serving, in all the
units.”

Being the kind of humble and thoughtful person he is —
“He’s got all the qualities you want in a person you're
around on a daily basis,” Duke coach John Danowski said
— Carroll also doesn’t want to be dismissive of someone
asking to write about him. “I’m honored that
you’d take the time,” he said.

***

The turning point was Feb. 9, 2007. Until that day, Carroll knew
he wanted to serve in the military, but in what capacity: Navy,
Marines or Army? His grandfather served. His father and two older
brothers all were Navy men.

The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks hit home, with fire
department service in his lineage, too, and the Carroll family
residing in Baldwin on Long Island, about a 45-minute train ride
from the center of New York City.

“I took it to heart,” Carroll said.

Carroll had a calling. But it wasn't until he learned Jimmy
Regan died that Carroll knew exactly where he wanted the response
to take him.

Regan, a fellow Long Island native and Duke lacrosse player from
1999-2002, was killed in Iraq while serving as a sergeant in the
75th Ranger Regiment, the most elite special operations force in
the Army, a volunteer unit that, in part, has troops on the ground
seeking to target known terrorists.

On Feb. 9, 2007, an improvised explosive device detonated near
Regan's vehicle while he was on patrol in northern Iraq. News of
his death reached the Duke lacrosse team just as it was picking up
the pieces from the false rape allegations that capsized the
program and drew white-hot national media attention the previous
spring.

While most players wouldn’t be blamed for recoiling after
hearing about the death of someone who once wore their uniform,
Carroll's reaction was different. He wanted to wear Regan's
uniform.

“It was probably within moments of hearing about Jimmy
getting killed, that I said ‘This is it,’”
Carroll said. “As far as we saw, he was the toughest guy in
the world. He’s a guy that we all looked up to, whether guys
knew of him personally or just knew of his story. I felt that that
would be a really great way to honor his memory, and do my military
service. I set out to try to follow in his footsteps.”

Carroll, whose 2006 season ended with a knee injury a month
before the rape scandal started, and teammates spent that spring on
a campus inundated with strangers looking to pounce and dispense
opinion on any shred of new information. It was infuriating.

The coach that recruited Carroll, Mike Pressler, was fired. The
allegations against David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade
Seligmann turned out to be unfounded.

But the stigma and stereotypes about college lacrosse players,
especially at Duke, stuck.

Little did people know Carroll, now a wiry 6-foot, 182-pound
man, did not fit into their broad brushstrokes. A former athlete of
the year at Baldwin (N.Y.) High — where he also played
quarterback and often matched up in lacrosse against current Blue
Devils assistant Matt Danowski of Farmingdale High —
Carroll rehabbed and played in all 20 games of the 2007 season.
Duke fashioned a nearly perfect comeback story, losing by a goal to
Johns Hopkins in the NCAA final, for the second time in three
years. Carroll was a first-team All-American defenseman.

Carroll had another year of eligibility, but he made up his
mind: He would no longer be a Blue Devil. He would become a
Ranger.

Carroll never personally knew Regan, whose framed No. 10 jersey
now hangs outside the Duke locker room. But prior to his senior
season, Carroll got Regan's contact information from then-assistant
coach Kevin Cassese. He intended to speak to Regan about the
Rangers, but Regan left the country for his fourth deployment
before they could talk.

***

Carroll (left) served four
deployments as a Ranger, in Iraq in 2008 and Afghanistan in 2009,
2010 and 2011. (Courtesy Casey Carroll)

Carroll soon found out how hard it was to become a Ranger.

First there was basic training. Then Airborne School, basic
paratrooper training at Fort Benning, Ga, followed by a four-week
program then called the Ranger Indoctrination Program. (It’s
now the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program and lasts eight
weeks).

The process is crafted to weed out those who are not capable of
sustaining the rigors of Ranger duty. Often in stifling heat and
humidity, trainees are pushed to physical and mental limits.
According to various public accounts, there’s a combat water
test, ruck marches up to 12 miles and things called smoke sessions
in which privates are told to do pushups and flutter kicks
indefinitely. You might have to hold a 45-pound rucksack over your
head until your muscles fail. There’s “Cole
Range,” a four-day experience of little sleep and mental
exhaustion comparable to the Navy’s “Hell Week”
for SEALs.

If you pass all of the tests, you may have the choice to select
which battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment you join. In
Carroll’s case, friends of Regan still serving in the 3rd
Battalion were proactive. They helped recruit Carroll to their
group. He ended up in the identical battalion, company and platoon
— a group of about 40 soldiers — in which Regan
served.

Carroll deployed to Iraq in 2008.

“It was a pretty special thing,” he said. “I
kind of realized the moment I got there, ‘Holy crap, I might
have bit off more than I can chew.’ If you could imagine how
we felt [at Duke] without Jimmy, imagine the regard that those men
held him in, having been there when it happened. I never felt that
I had to fill anybody’s shoes or anything like that, but
surely knowing what Jimmy meant to the platoon, I didn’t want
to let anybody down.”

Carroll started as a grenadier on a vehicle he described as
similar to one in the video game, “Call of Duty,” with
a 203M-grenade launcher on the back.

After serving at least one deployment, which for Rangers
typically last about four months, Rangers get the option to attend
Ranger School to become a team leader. This is a roughly 60-day
slog with three phases — at Fort Benning, a mountain phase in
a remote region near Dahlonega, Ga., and a swamp phase near Eglin
Air Force base in Florida. With limited sleep and food, trainees
encounter high-stress situations.

In the swamp phase, for example, Carroll was awake for most of
nine days straight. He was lucky to get between 15 minutes and an
hour of sleep each day. It prepares you for the worst. You're given
a buddy, the theory being that having someone to support you will
help you through the challenges. But Carroll ran through so many
partners, he could not accurately answer the question about who was
his.

Eventually, Carroll became a fire team leader of his platoon,
just like Regan. Carroll even ran the New York City marathon in
honor of Regan to raise money for the Lead The Way Fund, which
supports families of Rangers who have been killed or wounded.

“Despite popular belief, it will in fact take more than
six strides with my long dancer’s legs to make it to the
finish line,” Carroll wrote in a humorous fundraising pitch
on a website. “Like coach Mike Pressler always said,
‘We’re not just going for a run. It’s a
race.’ I paraphrased that, but I figured it would look better
in quotes.”

After Iraq, Carroll deployed three more times, to Afghanistan in
2009, 2010 and 2011. He executed raids on known terrorists based on
intelligence of their locations. “We were strictly going
after the bad guys,” he said. “There’s a whole
lot that goes into that. Everybody has their own role. Just like on
a lacrosse team, if I’m sliding to a guy, I know that Chris
Hipps or somebody is coming to get that second slide behind me.
Everybody just has to do their job and watch each other’s
back. It’s the same concept over there. Everybody is keeping
an eye on their sector and doing their job. We were lucky enough to
eliminate a lot of enemies.”

During Carroll’s third deployment, he said there was
two-month stretch where the entire battalion, across the country of
Afghanistan, seemed under fire.

“Every day there was a mission where one of our guys was
getting hurt or killed,” he said.

On one of Carroll’s missions, a member of his platoon was
shot. He survived, but it reminded Carroll of the realities of
war.

“That was the first moment where you realize you’re
not invincible,” he said. “You never think it’s a
game, but the moment one of your own goes down, it turns the whole
thing on its head. We always want to come home, keep everybody
safe. When you start seeing that, as good and as well-trained as
your unit is, you don’t have total control, it definitely
changes your perspective on things.”

***

Carroll in the Duke locker room
with faceoff man Brendan Fowler before Carroll's first game in
almost seven years, the Blue Devils' 2014 season-opener. He has
started 17 of 18 games for Duke this season. (Peyton
Williams)

Carroll was honorably discharged from the Army in February 2012.
As he neared completion of his fourth deployment, he was looking at
options for the future. After talking with Duke coaches and school
administrators, Carroll decided to return to Durham, N.C., to
pursue an MBA at the well-regarded Fuqua School of Business,
located near Duke’s practice fields.

With the help of the GI bill and the Yellow Ribbon program,
which covers costs beyond the GI bill’s limits, and the
support of his wife, Erin, a former Duke soccer player who taught
grade school while Carroll was based in Fort Benning, he reenrolled
at Duke in fall of 2012. At age 27, he received an additional
season of NCAA eligibility based on an exemption for those who
serve in the military. The couple's first child, Casey Patrick, was
born in September 2012.

After a successful fall ball, Carroll tore his ACL in practice
in January 2013. He didn’t play at all in Duke’s run to
the NCAA championship, its second in four years. “It’s
amazing,” John Danowski said. “He's jumped out of
helicopters. He's on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he
hurts his knee in a non-contact injury.”

Carroll rehabbed during the season and was cleared to play with
a week left, but Duke preserved his eligibility. Carroll spent last
summer working 70-80 hours for an internship in Charlotte, which
set him back physically upon return to campus in the fall. He only
practiced with the team two or three days a week while balancing
school and family responsibilities. His second child, John Aspden,
was born in November.

Danowski said the Duke coaching staff and likely the players had
doubts if Carroll could return at full strength for the 2014
season. But as his father, Peter Carroll said, “If he says
he’s going to do something, he’ll do it.”

Carroll said he wanted to play lacrosse again.

***

On Feb. 8, Carroll trotted onto the field at Duke’s
Koskinen Stadium for the Blue Devils’ season opener against
Jacksonville. His parents, wife, children, brothers and
sisters-in-law were in town to watch 60 minutes of lacrosse and
then attend little John’s christening the next day.

“A big weekend,” Carroll said.

Lacrosse, his wife Erin said, is what Carroll does in his spare
time. While other players hang out after practice, working on their
sticks or enjoying the lacrosse facilities, Carroll usually heads
home to tend to his family. "He's the first one in and out," Duke
equipment coordinator Jay Bissette said.

The night before the Jacksonville game, after practice, there
was a team meal in the Devils’ Den, a nondescript building
near campus. Assistant coach Ron Caputo, who actually coached
Carroll and Matt Danowski on a New York Empire all-star team in
high school, arranged trays of Italian food for the players and two
special guest speakers: Captain Jamie Sands, a former Navy SEAL
Team commander, and Colonel Ron Clark, a 26-year Army veteran. Both
men studied in a public policy and counterterrorism fellowship
program at Duke. Danowski met them and asked them to speak to the
team about their battlefield experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan
and how they could relate to organizational effectiveness, how
groups get better or worse, but they don’t stay the same.

For the defending national champion, it was a timely message. It
was for Carroll, too.

"Like Casey," Clark said, "I'm an Army Ranger."

Clark drew a direct parallel between lacrosse and the
military.

Carroll, his sons John Aspden and
Casey Patrick, wife Erin and father Peter after Duke's
season-opener in February. (Corey McLaughlin)

"Everybody knows what a size of a platoon is, right? It’s
about the size of your team, 35-40 dudes,” he said.
“You know why platoons are that size, why lacrosse teams are
that size? Since the days of the cavemen, men in groups of 35-40
will band together. How many dudes does it take to fight off a
woolly mammoth or to fight off another tribe? How many dudes can
you have assemble and still know what each other are thinking? You
get a group that is larger than that, you no longer have the
familiarity. That’s the size that prehistoric groups of men
would fight in. That’s why the platoon is the basic element
within a fighting formation."

Carroll spent about 45 minutes afterward listening to and
sharing stories with Clark, Sands and the Duke coaching staff
before sneaking home for 30 minutes prior to another team meeting
on campus.

The players ran this meeting. The senior class, of which Carroll
is a unique, respected and accepted member, spoke about what
playing at Koskinen meant to him and how to protect the home turf.
As with any group of college students, there were typical jokes and
hijinks. But when Carroll spoke, a hush came over the room. "He
demands that," Lobb said. "He’s really what Duke lacrosse is,
a guy who believes in right and wrong and lives his life the right
way.”

Carroll spoke in a laidback tone.

“The fact that I'm standing here right now, and there are
500 other Duke lacrosse alumni who would kill to be in my shoes,
says it all,” he said. “It's the coolest thing you're
going to do, until maybe you have kids, or something like
that.”

Laughter echoed in the room.

Later that night, Carroll caught up with John Danowski’s
college roommate, Arthur Diamond, a judge in the Nassau County
(N.Y.) Supreme Court, who was in town to hang out with his longtime
friend and watch the game. Diamond talked to the freshmen about the
extra scrutiny they face as Duke lacrosse players.

At about 10 p.m., Carroll and Diamond stood in the hallway of
the team building and talked about Carroll’s real-life plans
to close on a house, the mortgage that comes with it and a sales
and trading job with Wells Fargo that he will start this July in
Charlotte. Professional lacrosse with Major League Lacrosse's
Charlotte Hounds could also be an option. Carroll is on their
23-man protected roster.

***

Game day felt nostalgic for Carroll, who missed the locker-room
humor he compared to the team atmosphere of the Rangers. Earlier in
the week, Carroll texted with a Ranger buddy, Tyler Fillion, who
reasoned that listening to Lady Gaga would guarantee 10- to
15-percent added strength during a workout. Carroll also keeps in
touch with the 2007 Duke seniors, who have a long-running email
chain, just busting chops and keeping up with life updates.

“It’s probably the same reason why all athletes just
wish they had one more year,” Carroll said. “It’s
just pure fun being out there and having a blast.”

An hour before the game, Carroll, wearing a black brace on his
left knee, threw and caught in pre-game warm-ups, went through some
stick-work drills then retreated to the locker room. Inside, there
was no mention of Carroll’s wayward journey back to this
place. Focused on lacrosse, he slipped the familiar No. 37 white
game jersey over his head and shoulders in the corner of the room
next to Brendan Fowler, Duke’s prolific faceoff man and the
star of its 2013 NCAA championship run.

Danowski ran through the basic elements of success, including
winning the ground ball battle, a Duke trademark. “This is
just a glimpse of what’s to come,” Danowski said of the
season.

Moments before the opening faceoff, Carroll took a spot on the
sideline between Lobb and freshman Calder Alfono for the national
anthem. His legs shook back and forth in place as the song
finished. When it was over, Lobb and Alfono tapped Carroll on the
back, and he sprinted to midfield to line up with the starters for
both teams.

Carroll played nearly every minute in Duke’s 16-10 win
over Jacksonville, and started all but one of Duke’s 18 games
this season as the Blue Devils prepare to face Denver in the final
four on Saturday. His unique road back has led him right to where
he was seven years ago, with a chance to win a national title with
Duke at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. After the first game of
his return tour in Durham, as Carroll sought out his family in the
stands, a fan found him first.